the size and scope of the problem he seeks to address. at minimum, addressing those problems would require the cooperation of congress. at present a seemingly impossible request. before the president even took to the podium in buffalo, the rnc blasted out its verdict, lame speech, lame duck. republicans may enjoy lobbying a a -- the white house is facing criticism for muddled foreign policy and a noncommittal response to events unfolding in egypt and syria. and the international events have nothing to surveillance stories that continue to eat into the second half of the obama presidency. as harry truman said if you want a friend in washington, get a dog. president obama did so this week with the addition of sunny, another portuguese water dog, companion to bo and one of the few bright spots in the dog days of summer.

joining me today, correspondent for "the guardian" anna marie cox and former director of speech writing for the president -- i can't get the words out, i'm so excited, columnist for the daily beast and co-founder of fenway strategies, jon favreau and "washington post" columnist and msnbc political columnist eugene robinson. joining us now is chuck todd who is also, of course, host of msnbc's "the daily rundown." before we get into the actual policy here, i want to talk about the sort of bird's-eye view as far as what the president is doing on this great middle class tour if you will. to me it seems like he's trying to build up as much political capital as possible before he gets back to washington. what do you think he's trying to do? >> i think he's trying to talk about what people around kitchen tables are talking about, right? this has been the great disconnect of washington,

sometimes it's a trap that the obama white house falls into. i'm sure favreau will maybe even cop to that once in a while. when you're in washington, the washington news and story of the day as much as you want to talk about the economy and talk about tuition prices and talk about the things that are actually impacting every day people that are living in omaha or buffalo or miami, you're dragged down because you have not one but two crises in the middle east. you have the issue with the nsa which i think hurt his own personal credibility. it's become the example of gone washington, if you will, the defending the system as it is versus trying to change some things as he wanted it to be. i think, you know, the aim of this and it's been part of this whole, i think over the last six weeks they've tried to do this every couple weeks, some form of this, this is a bus trip, they've done different things when they've gone around the country, is to try to send the

message to the middle of the country. by middle, middle class voters, middle of the electorate, et cetera, that, hey, he is still focused on the economy, education is part of the economy. we know the high cost of tuition is something that is bothersome to a lot of people. we know you think we haven't didn't enough in washington. the question is, the hard part for him, he's in year five. does he have the credibility with this group of americans who think, okay, yes, he did have his eye on the ball or at a minimum, okay, he's got his eye on the ball more than the other guys so maybe at least i'll take his side during this budget-palooza we'll go through in a couple of months. >> this would seem to be pro prompt. one is the congressional fallout in the fall and the legacy piece. if you look at syracuse, scranton, buffalo, 41% of people

over the age of 18 in scranton have withdrawn altogether from the work force. in syracuse, the poverty rate is 32%. in buffalo the population dropped 49% since 1960. you are seeing a gutting the no not just rust belt cities but american cities where poor and working and middle-class families used to thrive. can the president reverse that? the congressional fight is one thing. the other thing is a very long-term structural issue that the president is now seeking to address. >> right. i think that's why he gave that speech at knox college a couple months ago, talking about the unequal nature of our economy right now and how that's been true for quite some time. this is why he ran for president. >> right. >> that's why he's talking about this today, college costs are, you know, have everything to do with getting a good job in this economy. people with a college degree make a lot more than people with -- it's not possible to get a good job without a college degree right now.

absent cooperation of congress, which doesn't seem like he's going to get, some of them think federal aid is socialism, he's going to try to do everything he can to bring costs down. >> eugene, the interesting thing about the proposal that he laid out today, is that it actually is about accountability and would potentially trim the amount of money that the federal government spends on aid or at least make it more efficient, right? >> that's the idea. >> you don't actually need to do it with -- you can establish these standards as ezra klein writes, without congress's approval. what's interesting is half of it meets congressional approval. it's the half that comes later and can be done quicker. that's something the department of education can do on its own. >> they can build the measure, i'm not sure they can apply them to federal aid, prorating federal aid to colleges that score higher. it is more complicated than

going down the u.s. news list and seeing best party school, check or uncheck. >> that's where most federal dollars are going. >> there are a lot of questions. if you're looking at graduation rates, for example, you don't want to discourage colleges that take a chance on students who are the first in their families to go to college, might have gone to high schools that didn't prepare them as well as some other schools. you want to hold colleges accountable. it is complicated and it's good that they're getting a start on it. >> anna, as jonathan chafe pointsous, the government is likening higher education policy to health care policy where his administration has devoted political capital. the question remains whether the education proposals will be as repellent to the gop as the health care proposals. this is something that maybe everybody could have agreed upon

once upon a time. >> right. >> given the current climate in washington -- >> there are so many parallels between what's happened with health care and education policy. this seems to be backwards engineered from what can we accomplish without congress's help. which you already pointed out. it sort of wants to hijack from the gop and cover sieves as treating this like a marketplace. as much as i'm in favor of doing everything we can to make colleges more affordable and have more people to have access, this encourages people to think of higher education as a consumer good. we're the only country in the world that thinks of it that way. other countries have much more highly financed public education where many colleges are free. we don't think of college that way here. we think of it as shopping around in the marketplace. we think of it as a right, not something people can do to participate in the community as a citizen. it's thought of as an extra. i think if we could change that way of thinking, again, here's a

parallel to what he's done with health care, the real solution here is nationalize colleges. >> well. >> ain't gonna happen, okay. >> we couldn't nationalize health care. the simple solution would be to adopt the same standard and same approach as every other country in the world does, like education. >> there's one big difference from health care and education. the perverse incentives are clear. doctors and hospitals, the more procedures they do, the more they get paid. they want to be efficient. in education, that particular insentative isn't there. it doesn't quite work that way. it's going to take some doing to find where the inefficiencies are before you can root them out. >> chuck, i think the fact that as honest, this is sort of the idea of treating the education sphere as a marketplace, would seem to be almost like i don't

know, something conservatives could embrace and that sort of middle ground reasonableness seems to sort of be the entire point of this exercise, right? i mean, i want to talk to you about the place that the president finds himself in right now, which is, you know, you've said this, you've pointed this out before. it is august. i think the president did not imagine he was going to be fending off foreign policy arrows, questions about surveillance and proposing sort of education reform. this was when he was supposed to be basking in the glow of immigration reform. >> there's that. but i wanted to get something that anna said. there is a middle ground. i remember 25 years ago in the education reform community there was talk of doing this, which is you've got to figure out a way, how do we move high school from 12th grade to 14th grade, there's a middle ground motto, keep colleges private and public and the way we've done it but how do you basically raise the ceiling of what a minimum education should be in this

country. right? you raise the ceiling in a vo-tech way. 13th, 14th grade could be fell-fledged college prep. you move on to college for two or three years in a smaller way in whatever field you want to pursue. but that, you know, somehow that got lost. and we have -- we no longer thought about, is there a way to raise the ceiling? part of it is nobody knows how to pay for it. no state wanted to experiment with it, even though there was maybe mandatory of 13th and 14th grade of some form would happen. you bring up the marketplace issue. that's another troubling part of the student loan crisis that there's been over the last 20 years. credit was too easy. universities took advantage of the fact that credit was too easy, too easy to get a second mortgage, too easy for a parent to raise the cost in crazy ways an yet there wasn't a sense of, at the time, for the tune to the

think it was that hard to get. well, borrow the money. it's low interest rates. it's easy to get and then of course universities responded by doing what? well, they can get away with raising the price. there was a freak-onomics aspect to it. the universities, the more expensive they were, the more valuable they seemed, the more exclusive they seemed. applications would go up for the more expensive institutions, not down. there's never been -- the problem is, i think the consumer in this case, which is the high school graduate, thinking about going to college, doesn't -- values the expensive is the value here, not the cheap. right? we think of a cheap university as a bad school. i don't know how you change that paradigm. >> john, we should mention that the president -- student loan reforms that a lot of folks said didn't really reform student loans insofar as the rates can go up to 8.5% in the next ten years.

but, again, this is about -- this is about a president who's trying to take a pragmatic stance. i think there are issues that shouldn't be that controversial but where washington is right now, these become somehow, they have the haze of, i don't know, socialism over them. i would say these are moderate conservative proposals, less than they are democrat. >> the president has been saying since the first year we were in the white house, like taxpayers cannot continue to subsidize out-of-control, rising costs for colleges, a conservative thing to say. i think -- back to like changing the incentive structure, look, "u.s. news & world report" one of the factors they have in the ranking is how much does the college spend in the more you spend, the higher up in the rankings.

the more people you graduate and put into real jobs, then the better value you have. it's not a cheap consumer good but a good value. >> that way college would be less like buying handbags and more like buying a car. no, that's an even worse metaphor. there is a metaphor in there somewhere. nbc's chuck todd, thank you. catch chuck on "the daily rundown" at 9:00 a.m. eastern. a new poll shows morelandlamorelan louisiana residents -- ♪ for a strong bag that grips the can... get glad forceflex.

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i thought long and hard about katrina, could i have done something differently. like land air force one either new orleans or baton rouge. >> that was george w. bush discussing the biggest mistakes of his presidency in his final press conference. president obama did not mention that it took two days -- two days -- for national guard troops to arrive after the hurricane struck or three days for fema to acknowledge that there was a situation at the superdome. instead, our 43rd president wished he had done a different photo-op. that clip is from january 12th, 2009, more than three years after the storm laid waste to new orleans and the gulf coast. here's why we're talking about it right now. a new ppp poll finds that 29% of louisiana republicans believe president obama was responsible for the poor response to hurricane katrina. that is more than the 28% who

blame george w. bush, the man actually president at the time and for the three years following it. the results are even more stunning among republicans over the age of 65. 42% of them blame the botched response on barack obama who was at the time a freshman senator in the united states congress. coming up, the white house expresses concern about a reported chemical weapons attack in syria. while the u.n. voices strong concern about the allegations. we will discuss chemical reactions and the international waiting game when "the new york times" peter baker joins us, coming up next. time nor the your business entrepreneur of the week. his first job was working at the boardwalk in ocean city, maryland. today he's the fifth generation of trimpers to run the company.

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after an alleged chemical attack in syria yesterday killed hundreds of civilians in the damascus suburbs and devastating video footage of the aftermath spread around the world, the

international community is searching for our response. yesterday, the u.n. security council held an emergency meeting calling for an investigation into the attacks. but according to the bbc, the security council failed to reach an agreement on a toughly worded statement condemning the alleged atrocity. according to diplomatic sources it was russia and china that blunted a more forceful response. as of this afternoon, a total 35 u.n. security council members have called for a chemical weapons team to be dispatched immediately and ban ki-moon says the attacks should be investigated without delay. if confirmed, the allegations would represent the largest use of chemical weapons since saddam hussein in the late 1980s. in the meantime, the blood letting continues. the ap reported this morning that bashar al assad's forces pressed on with a military offensive in eastern damascus, bombing the same suburbs attacked yesterday. joining us now is "the new york times" white house correspondent peter baker. peter, thanks for joining us. >> thanks for having me. >> i want to talk about the

inaction. we look at what's happened, the video footage from what is presumed to be a chemical attack in syria is devastating. and yet, we seem to be sitting on our hands. to some degree that seems to be due to intransigence on the part of the russians and chinese. i wonder how much you think the current stalemate between the u.s. and russians and russia and the international community is affecting u.n. security council action. >> well, it is, obviously. this has been a sore point between the united states and russia for quite a while. the syria situation is looked at differently in moscow than it is in washington. bashar al assad's government has every right to defend itself against the rebels who are attacking. so you see a different attitude there on vladimir putin's government when they hear reports of attacks by chemical weapons, they're just as likely to blame them on the rebels than they are on the government. they're not eager to have a morrow bust u.n. investigation.

in washington, problem's white house is approaching this swhau cautiously. just today on air force one, the spokesman said, the president is appalled by the president's reports. they don't have information about them and call again on syria to provide more access to investigators. it's a more cost response than say, france, whose foreign minister today said that the international community should react with force, his words, though not with ground troops. >> john, you are a word smith. i want to talk about the sman tick -- semantics about this. the term red line is a thing that was much discussed. david fromme tweeted yesterday, is he threatened to do "a" if they do "b," we don't want to do "b," take action, so we must squirm to avoid acknowledging

they did "a." >> i think the questions are complicated about what the administration has to do or what they can do. look, they have said they're going to provide limited support to some of the rebels. but i also think they're wondering which group should they support and which are friendly to the united states and which aren't. there's a lot of al qaeda mixed in there and i think -- >> i think that's fair. general dempsey said as much. we don't know which side we can support. we don't know the rebels necessarily have american interests at heart but at the same time, what is lost here in all this sort of translating and retranslating? in terms of the president and his position on what is a grave violation of human rights and as seemingly a situation where there are mass atrocities taking place. >> it's horrifying to see. but i think the question you have to ask is what can be done? everyone alike we have to do more. what is more? do we want to have a no-fly zone? do we want to take out air defenses?

general dempsey doesn't think that will be enough either. what can you do to stop the violence versus just being very -- >> as people in syria have pointed out, you know, well cal weapons, this is the international community is rightly upset and appalled by this. but look what assad has been doing all along with conventional weapons. he's slaughtered tens and tens of thousand -- >> 100,000 people have died. >> it's not like this is -- you know, the idea of atrocity is new. it's been going on for a while. what's also been going on, frankly, is a rare politic reluctance, not on the part of the president but most members of congress i would say and most other allied nations, to get involved in this conflict without kind of knowing -- >> getting involved in the conflict. >> right. without knowing we can come out with a better outcome than -- >> let's be honest. we don't have a good history in getting involved with these conflicts.

dempsey noted there's a deeply rooted conflict between multiple factions. that sounds familiar to me. whatever we're spending on human te humanitaran aid. we have screwed that up so badly in the recent past. >> obama was elected to help wind down the wars in iraq and afghanistan. he certainly has that in the back of his mind. peter, why establish the red line? at a certain point, if you think the polling numbers are with you to do nothing and you're not getting really any block back for that, why even bother saying there's a red line? that's where the president to some degree has opened himself up to criticism. we say we'll do one thing and we don't actually do it. >> i think exactly the criticism you're hearing. there's a red line and it doesn't seem there has been consequences, it's been confirmed that small uses of chemical weapons have been

confirmed in the past. the president responded by saying we'll provide more lethal aid to the rebels. that's been a slow and so far not meaningful response, according to the people in the region. the same thing in egypt, right? what's the consequence if the government goes out and kills hundreds of protesters if there's not a response? what critics will say, that emboldens the general cc in cairo. president assad in damascus to take even harsher actions. all that is balanced against what you are talking about, the president's desire to pull back from the region to be less of the world's policeman, not get involved in other people's civil wars. these are tough and difficult choices. >> i want to talk about -- because you have spent time with the man and i think understand him in a way that none of us do, i feel like as a compassionate person and someone who is truly a global citizen, though he was born in the united states of america, i think part of me wonders how much this weighs on him. certainly i think the problems

he faces domestically must weigh on him. to be president of the united states at a time when there is slaughter happening in syria to the tune of 100,000 people killed, 1.7 million refugees flooding into other parts of the arab world, egypt, which is completely destabilized where you have atrocities happening, slayings of people on buses, unarmed civilians, tear gas and/or chemical attacks in syria, it is, i think, hard to sort of reconcile what we think of the president and who he is as a man. >> right. >> with the inaction from the courthous white house. i wonder what your take is on that knowing him as you do. >> i'm sure that weighs on him terribly. he's also a pragmatic man. he has advisers who are telling him what his options are and what our options are and they are limited. that's not a satisfying thing to hear and it's frustrating but

he's also realistic. he knows some of these things, what you want to do takes time. it's slow and some of the things have to play themselves out. would we like to fix the situation faster? yes, absolutely he would. but if it means starting another land war in asia -- >> land war in asia, never start one of those. >> doesn't work out well. >> before we let you go, peter, in terms of the international community and the french coming out with stockily worded statements, is there a sense that someone else may take the lead here? >> that's possible. certainly the french and the british took the lead in libya at which point united states had to come in and help them out. the problem is, there are limits to other nation's power without the backing of the united states. in terms of any use of force and keep in mind here, the french are not talking about ground troops. it's still very dependent on american allies in a lot of ways. i don't think they're eager to try things without washington's

help in some fashion or another. >> peter baker from "the new york times," thank you as always. >> thank you. after the break, we have some breaking news. our nbc affiliate knsd is reporting that -- wait for it -- san diego mayor bob filner has agreed to resign as part of the deal reached with city officials. we'll have a live report on that, coming up next. with the flooring we want, the know-how we need, and low prices that won't trample our budget. then let's do some simple placing, locking... and admiring. a better-looking floor is just a few steps away. and... they're affordable steps. more saving. more doing. that's the power of the home depot. saratoga hickory laminate is a special buy. just 99 cents a square foot.

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apparently 18 allegations of sexual harassment is enough to force a mayor out of office. nbc affiliate knsd has learned that san diego mayor bob filner has agreed to resign as part of a settlement deal over the sexual harassment lawsuits facing him and the city. congratulations, san diego. after the break, rick perry wants texans and americans to know that he really hates obama care. but perry doesn't want texans and americans to know he really kind of needs obama care.

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our commitment has never been stronger. you can criticize us all you want but we're not going to pass a continuing resolution that includes funning for ongoing further encoursement and implementation of obama care. >> you cannot say you are against obama care if you're willing to vote for a law that funds it. if you're willing to funned this thing you can't say you're against it. >> congress gets exceptions, big union, corporations, it's the little guy, the young people that will get hung with this thing and lose their insurance. >> while some republicans continue to decry the evils of obama care, elsewhere the gop is quietly, secretly kind of into it. take governor rick perry. >> i will take out probably a

sharpie. it doesn't have to be a fancy pen and put my name to an executive order. >> probably a sharpie or maybe a pencil with the giant eraser. these days, the texas governor is reportedly lobbying the white house for $100 million in obama care funding. according to politico, texas health eaches are in talks with the administration to accept federal funding to for the funned iffing first act. governor perry is not 0 lone in his secret crush on the thing he publicly hates the most. so far, six republican governors have expanded medicaid in their states. jan brewer, chris christie, terry branstad, susana martinez, brian sandoval and jack dalrymple.

after years of railing against it, republicans are finally going to understand that the affordable care act actually helps people. in this, perhaps, governor perry expressed it best. >> sorry. oops. joining us now is msnbc policy analyst "the washington post's" ezra klein. we use every excuse we can to play the rick perry oops moment. he does seem to be having a little bit of an oops insofar as he's going to take a sharpie out and wipe away as much of the funding for obama care as possible and is asking for $100 million to implement parts of actually obama care. >> well, let me come in a little bit in the middle of this. i think on the one hand you see how weird the position is and on the other there's a point perry can legitimately maker is. peggy noonan wrote a piece saying this right here is the reason people hate obama care.

the word this linked it to a community first choice program, a program in medicaid to help people who are disabled get care at home db at home -- instead of being put into a nursing home or an outside institution. this is one of the things in obama care is a very big deal for the affected population. noonan was upset about some edge case with someone whose guardian as a caregiver and it turned out there's nothing there. this is precisely the program, the community first choice program that perry is endorsing and trying to sign texas up for. to give perry a little bit of credit here, this is not a core program of the obama care coverage provision. it's something else obama care is doing. if you repealed the law which perry said over and over he would like to do, you would repeal this program, too. in that way there is an incredible deficit of understanding among a lot of republicans in general, a lot of republican governors of what actually is in this bill. >> you're being kind when you

see a deficit of understanding. rick perry has been the champion of wiping obama care from the face of the earth and whether or not it's a major plank of the legislation, the fact that he is trying to implement part of it seems like hypocrisy to the enth degree. >> there might be hypocrisy. rick perry, i guess to his credit, i think it's greatly to his discredit, is continuing to say he will not accept billions and billions and billions of dollars in free money from the federal government to cover millions and millions of incredibly poor needy texans. >> yes. >> rick perry could say i'm 100% skin the in refusing to allow the federal government to give my people health care insurance for free. that is not -- i am not willing to give -- i would much prefer on behalf of rick perry's constituents if he were more of a hip cr a hypocrite. >> as would i. 1.5 million poor texans won't get access to health care because rick perry wants stand

as an ideological purist. >> right. >> as they've accepted whole hog obama care or parts of it, they refuse to admit that's what they're doing. jan brewer said while i remain opposed to the affordable care act, it's become increasingly clear to me that the status quo is not an action. with my medicaid restoration plan we can continue providing cost effective care to these individuals, arizona's working poor. amazing, it's jan brewer's program. >> god bless her. that means there are people in arizona that will get health care that wouldn't have gotten it otherwise. and they are people who really need it. it was a smart thing for her to do. she had to find a way to do it to nullify her constituency. she couldn't say it was barack obama's. >> she eats scorpions for breakfast. >> i wish more governors would do this, stop calling it obama care, call it heritage care.

i don't care. and more people would get health care. like this is what we want, right? i want more hypocrisy, more governors to claim credit for it. >> your panel is in favor of hypocrisy. >> ezra -- >> one thing that should be said here, obama care is built to allow this kind of hypocrisy. >> yes. >> there are two major things that obama care does to give people health care insurance. one is there are insurance marketplaces every state can set up. the other is medicaid programs. every insurance marketplaces can be branded by that state. in washington i think it's called the washington state health connector. >> yes. >> massachusetts's veshs rsion s called the connectors. they are flexible in allowing the states to come in and get waivers, in return for getting free money as if somehow you have to beg people to take free money. the states can reform their programs in dramatic ways, call

them new things. when obama care is up and running you'll not find anybody that comes into contact with a program they recognize as obama care. it is built for the governments to take credit. they are refusing to do what's in their best interest. >> the states have different words for it. they don't call it obama care, the place where you get your socialism or whatever that moniker was. i think it's both helpful and harmful to the president's legacy. helpful, yes, poor people, people who need health care get the health care they need. harmful insofar as he's not getting credit for the good stuff. there's been a torant of negative publicity around something that i think is good for the nation. when we talk about what the president has done for the country, there is some concern on the part of progressives who have seen him weather this storm. he should be able to take credit for the good stuff, too. >> the more people that get

signed up for this program, whatever it's called, in whatever state, he'll get credit in the long term. and the point is, he doesn't care. >> that seems to be the attitude, working with state governments. ezra, before we let you go, i want to talk about fixing the -- where there are problems with the law, you've written about the difficulty that we face in terms of making it better. you pointed out in the delay of the employer mandate, the problem here is that basically the white house had to do an end run around congress. they've gotten no shortage of criticism for doing that. they can't depend on congress because congress is so opposed to its very existence. >> yes, in other large pieces of legislation, typically you'll have continuous technical fix bills where you put in a bunch of things that aren't really about the core of the bill. you're fixing little bits of as you've come into contact with

reality. it is a problem that that's impossible to do in congress. i do think it's a situation come 2015 or 2016, it's delivering benefits. at some point we'll get past this kind of repeal and replace. i hope, i believe, they'll have to come into a somewhat more either kind of quiet or constructive approach to the law if it succeeds. >> perhaps we'll look forward to more rick perry oops moments. "the washington post's" ezra klein, thank you as always, my friend. >> thank you. after the break, he's a billionaire businessman, philanthropist and budget director. he also may be the cause of all that is rot innocent state of north carolina. we'll look at the political activist bill maher once dubbed the coke brother from another mother. that's next. ♪ now you can give yourself a kick in the rear! v8 v-fusion plus energy. natural energy from green tea plus fruits and veggies.

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in a matter of months, the state of north carolina, a state with a rich history of tolerance, tolerance and progressive policy. since republican governor pat mccrory came into office in january, north carolina's lawmakers have been on something "the new york times" editorial board called a demolition derby, tearing down years of progress. in the past few months, the state government has cut federal unemployment benefits for 170,000 residents while simultaneously slashing taxes for the wealthy. it is restricted reproductive rights while expanding gun rights to allow concealed weapons in bars. it has voted to ban sharia law while passing the worst voter suppression laws in the country. before january, republicans in the tar heel state had not been in control of both of legislative and executive branches for over a century, since reconstruction but they're

certainly making up for lost time. eugene, because you're from the carolinas, i would go to you otherwise. north carolina does have a history as al hunt writes in bloomberg, north carolina produced a much envied system of higher education and community colleges, good race relations, a desirable quality of life and healthy business business. the model which served the region and country so well is gone. thank you, governor mccrory. >> it's one of those states that i think has both become more conservative and more liberal or progressive over time. and more polarized. >> yes. >> and so this may be the way north carolina goes. it may swing wildly from progressivism to this sort of

beyond -- >> where they're banning sharia law, i have an answer why they've been so off the rails or perhaps part of an answer. the answer's name is art pope. he's the chairman of the board and ceo of variety wholesalers, a retail discount chain. he spent in 2010 $2.2 million on 22 state legislature races and won 18 of them. as they say, marc farinella, democrats running for office are always running against art pope. it's art pope's agenda. he sets it, funds it and directs the efforts to achieve it. the keanes are just fronting for him. >> what he's managed to do is exaggerate a trend which is happening all over the country. you have different populations turning out to vote, sort of what eugene said. we'll see further extremes in north carolina when you get

on-year presidential election voters come out who are young, who are multicultural -- >> the obama base. >> and off-year elections, where the republican base can influence who runs and who turns out to vote for them, you'll get more and more conservative legislatures. there has to come a point where the two sides clash. there has to. i don't know how it's going to happen but it will probably happen in an off-year election. >> i would say, john, the wrath of legislation that's gone through the north carolina statehouse, the curbing of reproductive rights, the worst voter suppression laws in the country, that's a good way to get them to the polls. >> if they're allowed to vote. >> go ahead. >> what the other problem will be now that they're pushing their primary up to right after south carolina, that will move the entire gop primary way to the right.

>> yes. >> you'll have republican candidates campaigning for two weeks in south carolina and then north carolina and any hope that the party moderates at that point is going to be lost. >> hope for moderation may be lost when you have one man, one very wealthy, very conservative man controlling everything. >> right. the way you combat that, i think, if you're a progressive, is with votes. it's time to change voter habits. >> vote often. >> yes. vote early, vote offen. >> it's worth noting that the doj, the department of justice has announced that they are officially filing suit in texas over that state's voter i.d. law, something eric holder previewed a couple weeks ago. it is official. tonight, rachel maddow is live in north carolina reporting on the effects of the new voter suppression laws in that state. that is tonight at 9:00 p.m. do not miss it. thank you to our excellent, stellar, hilarious panel, anna,

john and eugene. that is all for you. joy reed fills in for me tomorrow at noon eastern when she's joined by eric bates as well as others. "andrea mitchell reports" is next with chris and kathleen matthews. there's a new way to fight litter box odor. introducing tidy cats with glade tough odor solutions. two trusted names, one amazing product.

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